Last year at IFA, we saw Sony announce its Cyber-shot QX10 and QX100 pair of “lens-style cameras,” external add-on cameras that can either clip on to smartphones (and later, tablets) or be used remotely, communicating with their companion apps over WiFi and giving photography buffs the sort of large sensors, quality lenses, and high-performance optical zooms that are all too often unavailable on phones. For as powerful as both cameras sounded, they were kind of a hard sell, targeting neither the prosumer camera enthusiast nor the mobile hot-shot for whom traveling light and sparse is ...

Sony thought that if you were not satisfied with the imaging capabilities of your (compatible) smartphone, you might want to give its Cyber-shot QX10 and QX100 solutions a try. To refresh your memory, these are clip-on cameras that connect to your phone and transform it into a live viewfinder for the external shooters. A firmware update is available for both models, bringing the software version up to v2.0. This release will allow for higher ISO values (from 1600 to 3200 on the QX10, and from 3200 to 12800 on the QX100), as well as add support for full 1080p 30fps video. In the case of ...

Watch today's Pocketnow Daily as we talk about Sony's new tablet-compatible QX10 and QX100, and what that means for the camera lenses. BlackBerry is next as we go through its 10.2.1 update, and all the significant changes you look-out for. Nokia and Microsoft are next as rumors have Windows Phone 8.1 making a debut in a lot of Lumia devices during MWC. We later go through Apple's quarter results and how everything performed well, except the iPhone 5c. We end today's show by talking about Apple's patents for interchangeable lenses and the iPen. All this and more after the break. Stories: - ...

Sony's QX10 and QX100 Cyber-shot “lens-style cameras” were easily two of the most unusual products to pop up at last year's IFA. While either can be used hand-held, we saw how an extendable clip could let the cameras latch on to the back of an existing smartphone, or for an even more secure fit, Sony had custom cases to which the cameras could attach. Neither felt like the most graceful way to put a camera on a phone, but they worked in a pinch. But now Sony's pushing the limits of what sort of devices the QX10 and QX100 might find a home with, and it's going beyond smartphones with ...

Coming up to the IFA this year, we had a long list of devices we were looking forward to seeing, but there were only two big mysteries: the Galaxy Gear's hardware, and these crazy-looking lens-cameras from Sony. Well, we got the answers we wanted about both earlier this week, and while the Galaxy Gear is simple enough to understand, these Sony cameras are just so outside what we're used to that it was still a trick to wrap our heads around what it would be like to use one of these guys. Well, that's what the IFA, and all its opportunities for hands-on experiences with just-announced ...

There are few things in this world more gratifying to me than snapping a beautiful photo with a smartphone. I don't consider myself a photographer, I just like to take pictures of various things for fun. The challenge makes it sort of exciting – how I imagine early film camera adopters felt when snapping photos of the most mundane things and developing the film to see how the shots turned out. And proving naysayers (read: pro photogs) wrong in that smartphones can take amazing pictures is an especially sweet bonus. As such, for the last two years, camera quality has been a key factor in ...

Sony's getting us started with the big IFA events this week, taking its latest lineup of products to Berlin to share with us all. While we came to IFA to get the smartphone news, Sony's products cover a much wider swath. The company began today talking about things like new 4K displays, digital cameras, and camcorders, but even there we got some smartphone-related news. One thing we've talked about for a while is the need for Sony to better promote integration between all its device families, and it looks like it's attempting to do just that with its One-touch system. Supported devices ...